JESUS' LAST DAYS

Easter Monday, April 6, 2015

All during Holy Week more than any other time of the year, my thoughts go to Jesus last days and hours on earth and for years I followed the emphasis on the pain and physical torture and felt the required guilt that it was somehow all my fault.  I've changed a lot since I began reading, and preaching scripture and now I see the mental and emotional pain that plagued the Lord more clearly.
Imagine if you will what it must have been like to want to help, to guide, to show God's love to people and to be met with hostility, suspicion and violence and finally, betrayal.
During the last hour of his passion that betrayal loomed large to the point that he even called out to ask the Father if He were still with him.  When we are overwhelmed with grief, or pain or humiliation or any of those things that tear us up, we too, ask God if He is still with us.  And the bottom line is either we have faith or we don't.  When things are good we feel that God is quite near and then when they aren't good we doubt him altogether.  But at the last, Jesus said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit", acknowledging his faith that God is always there.  Of all the things we can take away from the events of Holy Week, that may be the best one of all.  Jesus leads the way to God through every thing that can happen to us because, to put it in modern terms, He has been there, done that.